Is the Ontario bar exam hard?
If you’re like us, you probably went through law school without thinking about the Ontario bar exam. Now that you’re getting set to write it, however, you probably have a lot of questions. Is it hard? What’s the pass rate? Can I re-write it if I fail? Let’s tackle these three questions one-by-one.
Beginning with the last question, the answer is yes: you can re-write both the barrister and solicitor portions of the bar exam if you fail. In fact, you have THREE ATTEMPTS to pass the exam in any one articling period. So don’t put too much pressure on yourself when you head into the exam room for the first time — one fail is by no means the end of the world.
Unfortunately, the Law Society doesn’t publish pass-rate statistics, and so it’s impossible to answer the second question. Anecdotally, the pass rate is believed to be around 90%. However, there’s a caveat. That 90% rate includes candidates who are writing the bar exam for a second or third time. This means that we don’t really know how many people pass the exam on their first attempt. It’s likely well-lower than the overall pass rate of 90%, though.
What about the first question? In our view, assuming you know how to navigate your study materials and have done a few challenging and up-to-date practice tests, the Ontario bar exam isn’t exactly “hard”. But it isn’t easy either. If you’re like most candidates, you’re going to find that time moves very quickly during the actual exam and that there’s more than a few questions you don’t know the answer to. Of course, this is totally fine — you’re aiming to pass not get 100%. But you should be wary of advice such as “don’t worry it’s a cakewalk” or “you don’t need to study for the Ontario bar exam…it’s a joke!” That’s simply not true.
In the end, if you take the time to review the materials and take the time to do a few different practice tests, we’re willing to bet that you’re going to do just fine! In fact, we think that practice tests are so important that we’re willing to offer candidates a DISCOUNT CODE that applies to all of our practice tests — even if they’re already on sale! Simply enter the code PASS at checkout to save an extra 20% on our (already affordable!) practice tests. Because, ultimately, we want to make sure that our exams are accessible to ALL candidates who are attempting to fulfill their dream of becoming a lawyer.
